Following this tutorial I was able to send mail link text.
Send email using Gmail and PHPMailer The new automatic update
generator is ready, it has been a long time since OCRALight has been
finished and little bit of this and that has been polished on the
update generation.
The process is fairly complex, it involves reverse-engineering,
data-mining, packaging, distribution and a lot o fighting with our
crappy Windows server that is between me and the final Linux
liberation.
Every step in the road has been automatized, one by one, every problem
has been solved and polished, now the final piece is in his place, the
automatic email generation. Now the updates will be made and send
everyday, even weekends and vacations.
If you are interested in the technical aspect keep reading:
How it has been done:
First of all, you need to have PHP with OpenSSL support, for Windows
you’ll need to Install PHP and carefully select OpenSSL in the
components list, if you already have PHP installed, don’t worry a
re-install will keep your configuration, and you’ll be able to select
OpenSSL.
Then download PHPMailer, and extract it near your main php
file.
You will need to have a Gmail account(obviously) I recommend you to
make a new one just for this, mainly because the configuration need to
be very precise, and you wouldn’t be able to use it freely without
loosing functionality or risking to break the configuration.
Configure your Gmail account to use POP mail, but not IMAP, ONLY POP,
just POP.
And now the code:
<?php
require(”PHPMailer/class.phpmailer.php”);
$update_emails = array(
‘Juan Perez’ => ‘[email protected]’,
‘Francisco Garcia’ => ‘[email protected]’,
‘Diana la del Tunel’ => ‘[email protected]’
);
echo “\nSending Update Email\n”;
$mail = new PHPMailer(); // Instantiate your new class
$mail->IsSMTP(); // set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // turn on SMTP authentication
$mail->Host = “smtp.gmail.com”; // specify main and backup server
$mail->SMTPSecure= ’ssl’; // Used instead of TLS when only POP mail is selected
$mail->Port = 465; // Used instead of 587 when only POP mail is selected
$mail->Username = “[email protected]”; // SMTP username, you could use your google apps address too.
$mail->Password = “yaourextremelynotlamepassword”; // SMTP password
$mail->From = “[email protected]”; //Aparently must be the same as the UserName
$mail->FromName = “Your name”;
$mail->Subject = ‘The subject’;
$mail->Body = “The body of your message”;
foreach ($update_emails as $name => $email) {
$mail->AddBcc($email, $name);
}
if(!$mail->Send())
{
echo “There was an error sending the message:” . $mail->ErrorInfo;
exit;
}
echo “Done…\n”;
?>
In this code I send the email to a group of people, thus I use the
“Bcc:” field instead of the “To:” one, to add a “To:” you would use
AddAddress($email, $name).
A possible upgrade would be to use a MySQL database to store the
addresses, and provide a web interface to add and remove
them. for the moment, this is enough.
Soo remember:
PHP with OpenSSL; PHPMailer; Create a Gmail Account; Activate POP Host:
smtp.gmail.com; SMTPAuth=true; SMTPSEcure=ssl; Port: 465; User with Domain;
Password; $Mail->send();
